“In accordance with the demands of the prosecutor and in view of your previous record, you are sentenced to death.”

I shook my head, certain the prosecutor had made no such demands—perhaps she had forgotten—nor had my previous record been so much as mentioned. Unless you counted the invasion of the Soviet Union, and that much was true.

“Death?” I shrugged. “I suppose I can count myself lucky I don’t play the piano.”

Oddly, the translator had stopped translating what I was saying. He was waiting for the chairman to finish speaking.

“You are fortunate that this is a country founded on mercy and a respect for human rights,” he was saying. “After the Great Patriotic War, in which so many innocent Soviet citizens died, it was the wish of Comrade Stalin that the death penalty should be abolished in our country. Consequently, the capital punishment handed down to you is commuted to twenty-five years of hard labor.”

Stunned at my declared fate, I was led out of the court to a yard outside where a Black Maria was waiting for me, its engine running. The driver already had my details, which seemed to indicate that the court’s verdict had been a foregone conclusion. The Black Maria was divided into four little cells, each of them so cramped and low you had to bend over double just to get inside one. The metal door was perforated with little holes, like the mouthpiece of a telephone. They were considerate like that, the Ivans. We set off at speed—you might have thought the driver was in charge of a getaway car after a bank robbery—and when we stopped, we stopped very suddenly, as if the police had forced us to stop. I heard more prisoners being loaded into the Black Maria and then we were off, again at high speed, with the driver laughing loudly as we skidded around one corner and then another. Finally we stopped, the engine was switched off, the doors were flung open, and all was made plain. We were beside a train that was already under steam and making strongly exhaled hints that it was impatient to leave, but to where, no one said. Everyone in the Black Maria was ordered to climb aboard a cattle car alongside several other Germans whose faces looked as grim as I was feeling. Twenty-five years! If I lived that long, it was going to be 1970 before I went home again! The door of the cattle car slid shut with a bang, leaving us all in partial darkness; the bogies shifted a little, throwing us all into each other’s arms, and then the train set off.

“Any idea where we’re going?” said a voice.

“Does it matter?” said someone. “Hell’s the same whichever fiery pit you’re in.”

“This place is too cold to be hell,” said another.